INTERVIEW
Would France be afraid to aim for the moon? While Arianespace is due to launch three satellites this Friday evening from Kourou, the executive chairman of the French company, which markets the launches of the European Ariane and Vega rockets, is issuing a warning cry. "We need a great mobilization for space", said at the microphone of Europe 1 Stéphane Israël. Due to the impact of the pandemic, the company will achieve "four to five launches less this year". And its customers "are at risk" since the satellites placed in orbit "depend on global economic activity".
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"The space sector should see its revenues cut by about 25% this year"
"The sector is suffering and we need to be supported, at State level and at European level. We are the expression of a public will, of a public-private partnership!", Insisted Stéphane Israel. "We needed it before Covid-19, we particularly need it now," he explains, saying that due to the health crisis, "the space sector should have its revenues cut by around 25 % this year".
Ariane 5 is due to launch this Friday evening, from Kourou in Guyana, three satellites, including a supply satellite which will dock with another aircraft already in orbit. An "extremely innovative" mission, he detailed. This will be the third launch of 2020 from the Guyanese Space Center, which was closed during the two months of confinement and is now operating in "Covid mode".
"It would be quite possible to fly Thomas Pesquet from Guyana"
The health crisis has also caused a "delay" for the inaugural flight of Ariane 6, which will finally take place in the second part of 2021, noted Stéphane Israël. "All our engineers are working hard on this," assured the boss of Arianespace. This European launcher, "more flexible and less expensive" than Ariane 5, "will be the most reliable in the world", and it could even carry astronauts in the future, according to him. "We have all the technological bricks that allow us to do this and at the end of the decade, it would be quite possible to fly Thomas Pesquet from Guyana."
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But these manned flights have "a cost", and the fact that the French astronaut is leaving in 2021 with Space X for his second space mission "shows that the Americans are spending billions for manned flight, and asking Europeans the question of their level of ambition ".